Honey, I Shrunk The Kids

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a 1989 film about four kids who mistakenly get shrunken to 1/4 of an inch tall and must cross a backyard which is dangerous and similar to a jungle for them due to their microscopic size.

Russell 'Russ' Thompson, Sr.: You're the one who needs a "shrink", Szalinski! You are a nutcase. And I'll tell you something: I have got an air hammer in my attic, and if you did do something to my kids, there's gonna be pieces of you all over the neighborhood! Come on, Mae!

[Russ Sr. storms out of the house, taking Mae with him]

Wayne: I think that went well.

Diane: I think we should have them over more often.

Ronald 'Ron' Thompson: Your dad will go to jail, your mother too. After all she paid for, that makes her accomplice. Do you even know what it's like in jail?

Amy: I'm not even going to tell you one more time to shut up.

Ronald 'Ron' Thompson: And then what? You'll smack me? You'll go to jail. I'll tell them after a big bee ate my brother you smacked me around. No jury in the world would fail to convict you. The whole Szalinski family is going to be in jail for life...

Amy: Look, my dad's invention works and so when we get home and he fixes us, we're gonna be so rich. You're gonna regret this.

Ronald 'Ron' Thompson: Um... Amy, you know I've always liked your family. Your dad's a real nice guy. He's not as weird as I thought he was. I love you and Nick like... Like my own brother and sister.

Russell 'Russ' Thompson, Jr.: So, you like to dance?

Amy: Yeah... You could see me?

Russell 'Russ' Thompson, Jr.: Well, no... Well yeah, yeah I could see you... But I wasn't watching you. I...

They were kind of nervous. It was after Re-Animator had come out, and our kids were complaining that they couldn’t see these movies that we were making. We came up with the idea for Honey! I Shrunk the Kids, and took it to Disney. They liked it, and we developed it for them. We got Ed Naha, who wrote Dolls, which we had done together, to write the script. I was going to direct, and did all the planning and worked out the special effects, and two weeks before it started shooting I got sick and couldn’t do it. They got Joe Johnston to direct the film, and I was pretty pleased with the results…It’s funny. When people talk about [Honey! I Shrunk The Kids] they say, “It’s so different.” Really, it’s not that different than Re-Animator. It’s about a mad scientist and an experiment that goes wrong, and so forth…the potential for severing some heads was there, when you have a giant ant coming at you with those big mandibles. Who knows what could happen?

Stuart and Brian had young children back then and came up with this idea about shrunken kids. They pitched it to Disney and the studio was interested. So, they approached me about working with them and we came up with the story. When I was a kid on the East Coast, there was a comic strip in the Sunday edition of The New York Daily News called the Teenie-Weenies. It was one huge frame showing little people riding around on mice or sitting in thimbles and I just loved that. There was also a little guy or girl that you could cut out of the newspaper and paste on cardboard to play with. So, in a way, I was prepared for this sort of thing ever since I could hold a newspaper in my chubby little hands.